No, you foolishly played along.
The South was not separate, the southern states were not sovereign republics, Kevin. They were part of a larger whole, they fired on the national flag, they spit on the sacrifices of the patriots, they defied constitutional process, and you are making them out to be good guys when in fact they were bad guys.
Yes, actually they were. Every state was, and technically still is, an independent sovereign state. The federal government, note that it is not called the national government, was created by the states to act as their agent, just as the United Nations was created by independent sovereign states from around the world to act as their agent.
If every state were sovereign, then why did the Confederates complain that they couldn't exercise control over the free states. Why did the Confederates complain that the free states didn't return slaves to the slave states? In the words (in their Declarations of Causes of Seceding States at
Declaration of Causes of Secession ) of the Confederacy, who opposed Constitutional states rights the reason for the Civil War?
Confederates oppose (via the Constitution) other states sovereignty and claim:
o It [the Union] refuses the admission of new slave States into the Union, and seeks to extinguish it by confining it within its present limits, denying the power of expansion. Mississippi
o It [The Union] has nullified the Fugitive Slave Law in almost every free State in the Union
. Mississippi
o In many of these States the fugitive is discharged from service or labor claimed, and in none of them has the State Government complied with the stipulation made in the Constitution. The State of New Jersey, at an early day, passed a law in conformity with her constitutional obligation; but the current of anti-slavery feeling has led her more recently to enact laws which render inoperative the remedies provided by her own law and by the laws of Congress. In the State of New York even the right of transit for a slave has been denied by her tribunals; and the States of Ohio and Iowa have refused to surrender to justice fugitives charged with murder, and with inciting servile insurrection in the State of Virginia. Thus the constituted compact has been deliberately broken and disregarded by the non-slaveholding States, and the consequence follows that South Carolina is released from her obligation. South Carolina
Confederates oppose Freedom of speech and thought:
o It advocates negro equality, socially and politically, and promotes insurrection and incendiarism in our midst. Mississippi
o they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. South Carolina
o They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.
Confederates oppose freedom of the press and speech:
o It has enlisted its press, its pulpit and its schools against us, until the whole popular mind of the North is excited and inflamed with prejudice. - Mississippi
Confederates oppose freedom of assembly:
o It has made combinations and formed associations to carry out its schemes of emancipation in the States and wherever else slavery exists. - Mississippi
The Confederacy seceded universally and primarily to preserve racist slavery:
o
our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government
the prominent reasons which have induced our course. Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery
Mississippi
o Utter subjugation awaits us in the Union, if we should consent longer to remain in it. It is not a matter of choice, but of necessity. We must either submit to degradation, and to the loss of property worth four billions of money, or we must secede from the Union framed by our fathers, to secure this as well as every other species of property. For far less cause than this, our fathers separated from the Crown of England. Mississippi
o We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States. Those States have assume the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions [slavery]; and have denied the rights of property [slaves] established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; - South Carolina
o In all the non-slave-holding States, in violation of that good faith and comity which should exist between entirely distinct nations, the people have formed themselves into a great sectional party, now strong enough in numbers to control the affairs of each of those States, based upon an unnatural feeling of hostility to these Southern States and their beneficent and patriarchal system of African slavery, proclaiming the debasing doctrine of equality of all men, irrespective of race or color-- a doctrine at war with nature, in opposition to the experience of mankind, and in violation of the plainest revelations of Divine Law. They demand the abolition of negro slavery throughout the confederacy, the recognition of political equality between the white and negro races, and avow their determination to press on their crusade against us, so long as a negro slave remains in these States. Texas
o We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable. Texas
o That in this free government *all white men are and of right ought to be entitled to equal civil and political rights* [emphasis in the original]; that the servitude of the African race, as existing in these States, is mutually beneficial to both bond and free, and is abundantly authorized and justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will of the Almighty Creator, as recognized by all Christian nations; while the destruction of the existing relations between the two races, as advocated by our sectional enemies, would bring inevitable calamities upon both and desolation upon the fifteen slave-holding states. Texas
o Georgia having dissolved their political connection with the Government of the United States of America, present to their confederates and the world the causes which have led to the separation.
we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery. - Georgia
